In a variety of fields, there is a growing need for monitoring and/or tracking the location of an individual. For example, such monitoring is useful in the medical care field for autistic individuals and Alzheimer's sufferers whom tend to wander outside a care facility potentially getting lost. Other fields include child care, law enforcement and geographically isolated working environments.
An attempt to address maintaining information regarding a patient's location and wellbeing is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,825,794, entitled “Alzheimer's Patient Tracking System” which issued Nov. 2, 2010. The patient wears an electronic asset tag which has an active mode and a sleep mode. The electronic tag is kept at low power in the sleep mode to conserve power, and power is consumed by the electronic tag when the electronic tag moves out of range of an external transmitter. When the patient moves out of range of a base station for a predetermined period of time, the electronic tag switches on and begins transmitting its coordinates to a terrestrial radio network. Also described is a non-portable base station positioned at a fixed location and powered from the mains. There is no disclosure how this system operates during a power outage or power glitch, conditions which would seem to raise false alarms disabling power mode. No alarm are described to indicate that the locator has gone beyond the range of the plugged in base station.
There is a need to address outstanding issues in providing individual geolocation.